Time to trade privacy for safety, says NSW Police Commissioner

Andrew Colley

NSW Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione says Australians will have to sacrifice some of their privacy expectations in order to stay safe from terrorist attacks and criminal activity.

Mr Scipione made the comments at a Trans-Tasman Business Circle event in Sydney. He was responding to a Fairfax Media question about how data retention laws championed by Australian authorities would affect goodwill towards police in the community.

Data retention laws would require internet service providers and telcos to collect and store information about their customers' internet habits in order to help identify potential security risks.

Mr Scipione said it was perplexing that, as consumers, people were prepared to sacrifice their privacy in order to receive discounts and better deals but not for the sake of their safety.

Advertisement

''At what stage does the community say, 'we’re prepared to give up some of our privacy in order to remain secure'?,'' he said.

Mr Scipione has been one of the most vocal of Australia’s police commissioners pursuing the laws, which would also require carriers to collect information to identify who is involved in communications on their networks, including their location and the time they make them, but not the content of those communications.

They would be required to keep the information to be made available for interception warrants for at least two years.

Former Labor attorney-general Mark Dreyfus shelved plans for the regime in June last year following a public backlash over privacy and after the parliamentary committee overseeing the plan expressed concerns about its impact.

But law enforcement officers, including Australian Federal Police Assistant Commissioner Tim Morris have remained vocal about the need to introduce them and the proposed legislative amendments have been referred to a Senate committee as part of a sweeping review of telecommunications interception laws.

The proposed data retention laws have drawn strong criticism from carriers, the legal community, civil liberty group and privacy advocates.

Law firm Gilbert & Tobin wrote in a submission to the parliamentary committee examining the bill that its discussion paper regarding the new laws failed to ''give enough attention to civil liberties''.

Similarly, Electronic Frontiers Australia told the committee the data retention regime ''would amount to an unprecedented program of mass surveillance that would invade the privacy of all Australians in the name of catching a tiny minority of serious wrong-doers''.

Mr Scipione conceded that policing authorities' handling of the issue with the public had been less than perfect.

''It’s a big issue,'' he said. "It’s a conversation that needs to be had. I don’t know that law enforcement has done enough to explain why we need to do it. The communication gap is the thing that is causing the most angst.

''It’s the debate that needs to be had, and for that reason I’m pleased that even in forums like this we’re talking about it.''

Mr Scipione also left his critics with a dire warning. ''The day will come when the next terrorist attack on the planet will cause authorities somewhere to come back to their police, to their security services, their intelligence services and say, 'go and find who did this'.

''Before that they might say, 'go and look for who might do that' - go looking for the needle in the haystack. Well, the problem we have got is that, if we don’t get this right, we won’t find a needle because we won’t have a haystack to look in.''

69 comments so far

Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

Commenter

Benjamin Franklin

Location

Philadelphia

Date and time

June 30, 2014, 6:19PM

Big Brother in the form of an increasingly powerful government and in an increasingly powerful private sector will pile the records high with reasons why privacy should give way to national security, to law and order, to efficiency of operation, to scientific advancement and the like.--William O Douglas, Former Justice of the US Supreme Court

Commenter

Tone

Location

Melbourne

Date and time

July 01, 2014, 2:20PM

These examples and many others demonstrate an alarming trend whereby the privacy and dignity of our citizens is being whittled away by sometimes imperceptible steps. Taken individually, each step may be of little consequence. But when viewed as a whole, there begins to emerge a society quite unlike any we have seen -- a society in which government may intrude into the secret regions of man's life at will.--William O Douglas, Former Justice of the US Supreme Court

Commenter

Tone

Location

Melbourne

Date and time

July 01, 2014, 2:21PM

+1 "trade privacy for safety" That's what the Stasi used to say to the East Germans...probably also what Kim Jong Un tells his people....but don't quote me. Why not just put a big fence around all us all and RFID tag us? Then our "protectors" can "keep us safe". Oh wait..we don't need RFID tags, our mobile phone addiction will that job nicely. When does "Operation Patriot Sheep" come into being?

Commenter

PaxUs

Location

Austerelia

Date and time

July 01, 2014, 2:35PM

+1

Commenter

DavBlayn

Location

Perth

Date and time

July 02, 2014, 12:40PM

I'm wary of policemen asking for extra surveillance powers to 'defend the community'. Let's remember who the police serve. The public NO. The government in power YES. Of course if the government is the people's friend the police force are also your friend. It's when the government turns against its people (which does happen a lot more often than we want to believe) that the police powers become a problem, because the police are no longer the people's friend but their enemy. The old saying 'He who pays the piper picks the tune' is true always.

Commenter

Billnix

Location

Western Sydney

Date and time

June 30, 2014, 7:09PM

+1

Commenter

Office Rabbit

Date and time

July 01, 2014, 1:53PM

+1

Its the thin edge of a very dangerous wedge.Information is power and subject to abuse. Innocent people can be made to look bad simply by choosing what is presented and how it is presented. The media and politicians know this only too well. Mud sticks, even when the mud is fabricated. Consider recent news that roughly half of Australians held in custody pending trial are subsequently found not to be guilty. Appalling.

Commenter

HappyB

Location

Sydney

Date and time

July 01, 2014, 5:57PM

To paraphrase a wise man: "Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both."

I quite like being able to communicate without someone making notes about who I talk to, when and where. I definitely don't like the idea of having to explain my communications or ending up on a watch list. Certainly not because I happened to receive a call from a friend who was in the proximity of some other people who happened to be planning a protest. Given then some of my other posts here may have been slightly critical of the government, it could happen that I end up a target just for having an opinion.

I see a future with more tools like TOR and Wickr being used by a majority, not just the educated minority.

Commenter

J

Date and time

June 30, 2014, 7:28PM

Question - ''At what stage does the community say, 'we’re prepared to give up some of our privacy in order to remain secure"

Answer - There is no stage when I believe security is more important than privacy. Terrorist is the modern day word for Witch. Security is the excuse for stripping peoples rights and privacy so that security companies and police can extract more dollars from the tax payers to pad their budgets.

The chance of being killed by a terrorist in Australia is virtually Nil. We already have measures in dealing with criminals.

Subscribe to IT Pro

Follow Us

Editor's Choice

Prime Minister Tony Abbott has bolstered Malcolm Turnbull's ministerial duties, handing him greater responsibility for e-government in a push to expand the use of a single digital identity for Australians.

Data

The new roof that spans Margaret Court arena does more than keep out the weather. Built into the gantries that surround the sliding ceiling are Wi-Fi antennas that beam web access to every ticket holder.